Miami Vice

Updates made

28/10/17 – Added scans and details thanks to Martin/Stadium 64

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading...

I have to admit, I was surprised to see that a Miami Vice game actually went unreleased when Frank sent me the details of this one. Surely a game based on such a huge TV show could find its way onto the market? A little digging around brought forth possible reasons as to why it may not have come to fruition.

Firstly there had already been a Miami Vice game released three years earlier across the 8-bit platforms. Its not that perhaps the market was saturated already, but the fact the original game got such bad reviews, the C64 version getting a mere 30% in Zzap! Magazine. On the other hand, a successful use of the license would surely have overcome the hurdle of a stinker of a first game; a different company would have produced it after all.

Another puzzler is the fact it was planned on being released around Christmas 1989. Surely a game based on a hit TV show, released at Christmas, would be like a license to print money?

Looking at the databases on World of Spectrum, GB64 and CPC Zone, it seems that Softek weren’t exactly prolific games developers, and their only entries I could find on WoS are for games compilers and on CPC Zone. I only found one game entry. On GB64 there were relatively more, with eight entries going back to 1983, whether it was the same Softek trading in 1983 as 1989 I simply don’t know, but perhaps there was an inexperience or inability to get games onto the market, or maybe there wasn’t enough of a cash flow to see

Miami Vice to fruition after paying for the license. Certainly their last entry on GB64 is from 1988, the year before Miami Vice was due to be released suggesting they were struggling by the end of the eighties.

Nothing else was known about the game, the only reference we had is a passing mention in Zzap magazine, so we don’t even know the possible storyline or style of the game, but I’d guess that this is yet another game to fall by the wayside whilst a dying software house tried to save itself from going under.

A Capstone advertisement was found in a US sales catalogue from 1989, so it does seem that a game was on the cards. It is currently listed as abandonware on the PC Dos platform.

Martin/Stadium 64 then in October 2017 dug out some flyers from a sealed copy of Intracorp’s Pro Football Facts and Predications (released in 1989). This shows that Miami Vice was supposed to be released in July 1989.

Martin suggests that the Capstone and Softek versions could be two separate editions, though my theory so far is that Softek were producing the game and Capstone to distribute in the US. We need to get proper credits though to fully confirm. Martin suggests that Capstone released the Tynesoft version of Superman, so it seems plausible. Maybe even Tynesoft were involved?